13 December 2014

Artist Biography
by Stewart Mason

The Dentists called it a day when guitarist Bob Collins left the Medway, Kent-based Brit-pop band in 1996 following the band's disappointing final album, Deep Six. Singer/guitarist Mick Murphy, bassist Mark Matthews, and drummer Rob Grigg
regrouped with new guitarist Chris Flack to form Coax. After giving
their new band an equally bad but far less memorable name than The Dentists, the quartet released Fear of Standing Still in early 1998. Although the album is a resounding return to form after the too-noisy and underwritten Deep Six, and is for all intents and purposes simply a Dentists album under a different name, Fear of Standing Still was virtually ignored in both the U.S. and the U.K. and Coax split before recording a follow-up.

Although they evolved into a full-fledged pop band, Guster
began their career as a quirky acoustic trio. The band, whose three
co-founders met during freshmen year at Tufts University, spent most of
the 1990s touring the college circuit and releasing independent albums,
all of which featured hand percussion in lieu of a traditional drum set.
Released in 1999, Lost and Gone Forever widened the band’s sound considerably, and the follow-up album found percussionist Brian Rosenworcel playing a drum set on several songs. Multi-instrumentalist Joe Pisapia joined the lineup in 2003, allowing Guster more freedom to explore a combination of folk, pop, and rock.

Guster formed in 1991, when Ryan Miller, Adam Gardner, and Brian Rosenworcel first crossed paths at college orientation. Originally called Gus, the trio played local shows around the Boston area before releasing an independent album, Parachute, in 1994. By 1996, they’d elongated their name to Guster and recorded a second album, Goldfly, which netted the band a contract with Sire Records. Sire reissued Goldfly in 1998, and the bandmates decamped to a recording studio later that year to work with producer Steve Lillywhite. Released in 1999, Long and Gone Forever
became the band’s unofficial breakthrough album, cracking the lower
reaches of the Billboard charts and spinning off a hit single, “Fa Fa,”
which peaked at number 26 on the Adult Top 40.

Compared to Guster's early albums, Long and Gone Forever
was downright lush, with strings and horn sections beefing up the
band's standard mix of bongos, vocal harmonies, and folk-pop
songwriting. Guster went even further with their follow-up effort, Keep It Together, which featured drum kit percussion and contributions from a talented multi-instrumentalist named Joe Pisapia.
The album was released during the summer of 2003, where it cracked the
Top 40. Meanwhile, the band also released a “fake” version of the
record, The Meowstro Sings -- Guster's Keep It Together, in which Guster’s
vocal tracks were replaced with simulated cat meows. The so-called
“meow mixes” were released online in an attempt to battle illegal file
sharing.

Several months after Keep It Together’s release, Pisapia joined the group permanently. He made his official debut on the 2004 concert album Guster on Ice, which found the guys playing selections from all of their albums. Now a four-piece outfit, Guster returned in 2006 with their richest-sounding album to date, Ganging Up on the Sun. The group's sixth studio album, Easy Wonderful, which was partially recorded in Pisapia's Middletree Studios in Nashville, was released in October of 2010. Right around that time Pisapia announced he wouldn't be touring with the band any longer, choosing instead to play with k.d. lang full-time. He was replaced in the touring lineup by guitarist Luke Reynolds, a former member of the band Blue Merle.

09 December 2014

Review
by Andy Hinds

Helmed by singer/songwriter/guitarist Jason Taylor, the little-known Sugarpop produce a surprisingly consistent batch of power pop tunes on their 1997 release Give Up Your Sister. Many of the material uncannily recalls the offbeat yet poppy sensibilities of Kurt Cobain's
best work. But don't be misled -- this is not another "Nirvana-be" band
-- Taylor's ideas are unique enough to warrant serious attention. Plus,
the stylistic scope of Sugarpop
is broader than that of most alternative rock bands of the nineties;
encompassing punk, power pop, electronic drum loops, occasional country
twang and other esoterica, they offer just enough variety to keep you
guessing. Give Up Your Sister
made a dent in the American college radio world in 1998, charting in
CMJ's Top 200 briefly, but was otherwise overlooked.

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